William Roache speaks to the media outside Preston crown court after being found not guilty. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The judge at Preston crown court repeatedly reminded the jury to differentiate between William Roache and Ken Barlow, the Coronation Street character he has played for the past 53 years.

But certain similarities between the man and his fictional alter ego emerged during the three-and-a-half-week trial.

Barlow has rattled through more than 20 lovers over the years. In the witness box Roache acknowledged that he was frequently unfaithful to his first wife, Anna Cropper, during the time of the alleged offences for which he has now been cleared.

He admitted adulterous liaisons in the marital home in Haslingden, Lancashire, but insisted that he was only interested in "mature, willing partners". His first marriage "wasn't as satisfying as it ought to have been", he said, but he said he was "100%" faithful to his second wife, Sara Mottram, till her death in 2009.

Reports of his sexual misadventures were far from new. In 1991 Roache sued the Sun over an article headlined "Boring Ken Barlow Was Girl-Crazy Stud" which alleged Roache, whose character is famously the only Guardian reader in Weatherfield, had enjoyed a one-night stand with the late Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner, and had "seduced" Jennifer Moss, who appeared as Lucille Hewitt. Roache decided to keep his sex life out of the courtroom and only sued over the "boring" smear. He won and was awarded £50,000 in damages.

Barlow is famed for his priggishness, his enduring superiority complex – in the very first episode back in 1960 as an upwardly mobile young student, he fought with his postman father over a snooty look he gave the HP sauce bottle on the dinner table.

In court, Roache gently objected to a suggestion made by his barrister, Louise Blackwell, that Coronation Street was a soap – this in a discussion of how he quickly became a star after joining the cast at the programme's inception in December 1960. "I still don't like the word soap," said Roache, and proceeded to compare Corrie to the innovative kitchen sink dramas of the era when Coronation Street began.

Namechecking Marlon Brando, James Dean and other stars of the "new realism", he said: "We were the first on television. It was highly prestigious, it was cutting edge. We were a drama and did it like that."

He seemed to enjoy talking about his early upbringing as a doctor's son in Derbyshire, particularly his time at an experimental Rudolph Steiner school run from his grandfather's garden in Ilkeston.

Speaking about the effect the school had on him, he said: "I did have an interest in things from beyond the sixth sense of the normal. Spiritual matters always remained interesting."

Roache has made no secret of his unconventional spirituality over the years – he has dabbled in druidism and once donned white robes at Stonehenge. But under cross-examination, he backtracked from comments he had made in a TV interview in New Zealand last year in which he appeared to be suggesting that abuse victims were being punished for ill behaviour in a past life. Giving evidence, Roache said he believed in reincarnation and an "absolute deity, a total God", but never meant to suggest that the abuse was a form of divine retribution.

He told the jury he was part of the Pure Love movement and has what he calls his "knowing – a knowing voice I know to be correct, by which I live".

On the steps of the court after his acquittal, Roache thanked "James and the Circle of Love for their love and energy that has brought me to this place and this time and I look forward to being with them on Friday night".

Roache reportedly attends regular meetings of fellow Pure Love devotees near his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Last year a Daily Mail reporter claimed to have infiltrated one such gathering, which consisted of "meditation, reiki and an open discussion of messages received from the spirit realm".

Now 81 and with his good name restored, Roache can continue his record-breaking stint as the world's longest serving soap actor. In April 2013, Deirdre announced Ken had taken an impromptu holiday. If he had lost the case, he would never have returned. Acquitted, we can expect him back in Weatherfield, picking up his Guardian at the Kabin as if he had never been away.